Meaningless Holidays
Off the keyboard of Lucid Dreams
Published on Epiphany Now on December 28, 1012
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner
Have A Meaningless Holiday Cheap Plastic Shit On Me.
There was a time, not so long ago, where it seemed the only limiting factor for what you could accomplish was your own laziness. Maybe this idea has always been an illusion, but I don’t think so. A four year college degree doesn’t get you employment now. The only thing you can expect from a four year degree now is a monthly bill that has to be paid. My wife got a four year degree in communications and all it has done has been to generate a $117.63 bill every month which is comparatively low. That’s mostly because she worked and paid $800 a month towards college while she was attending. We have another 10 years to go before her student loan is paid in full. What are we to do now to better our financial situation? What kind of meaningful work is there in our meaningless society? If you were to argue that our civilization has meaning, what kind of meaning would you argue for?
Our lifestyle is dependent on a wealth pump with the intake end rooted by coercive trickery in the third world. It’s come down to a cheap plastic lifestyle assembled in China and imported to America. All of this cheap plastic shit is designed to make it’s way to a landfill where it will outlive the human race as cheap plastic shit. My house is awash in this holiday plastic shit that was generated through a perverse celebration which requires everybody to perpetuate this cheap plastic shit paradigm. The fact that it’s meant to be a celebration of the birth of our salvation is just too ironic for further comment. What does the Winter Solstice have anything to do with cheap plastic shit made in China and Jeebus? Apparently there is a link, or I wouldn’t be literally tripping over it now. To make matters worse half of these gifts just end up going straight back to Wally World where they are exchanged for store credit because trailer park America can’t even abide the cheapness. They’d rather have store credit to buy cheap American beer and cheese puffs so that they can anesthetize their minds from the onslaught of how cheap their lives have become.
I suppose it’s a good thing that all of this worthless crap is so cheap because minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. That’s $290.00 a week gross at 40 hours a week. That’s in the neighborhood of $230 a week take home which is $920 a month. Are they fucking serious with that shit? What the hell are you supposed to do with $920 a month? About the only thing you can do is buy some cheap American beer and cheese puffs at Wally World to go with your kid’s cheap plastic made in China gifts. It’s no wonder America stares at the teevee at night, after working for jack shit at a job that doesn’t matter. All so that we can live in a place that’s not worth caring about and is destined to rot as soon as climate control goes away. That cheap plastic shit is going to outlive our residences.
The only thing the world cares about is money. Have you ever really let that sink in? I remember making the decision, right about the time I dropped out of college with a 4.0 gpa, that I wasn’t going to live my life being concerned about money. I didn’t want to make decisions that had to do with the acquisition of money because it felt so cheap and trivial a thing to be concerned with. I thought there were ideas and causes that needed my attention more than money. I was wrong. Those ideas and causes require money. It’s strange how if you have enough money, than you don’t have to worry about making money because the bankers just give you money. I wish I could live off of the interest from all of the money that I have. But when your bank account looks like it was made in China, all the bankers do is nickel and dime you $5 dollars a month for the privilege of keeping your money there. I had a negative balance in my savings account a couple of months ago from those charges growing more than my “savings.” This is just the way it is. It’s sad.
How is it that I’ve made it to 33 years old and I am just now figuring all of this out? I got married. Somehow that meant buying a house and being concerned with something called a “career.” I wasn’t very good at the career bit. I had one, it lasted about six years until I had to chose between being medicated with a career or not medicated with no career. I chose the later. Now I’m going back to college for the eighth time in my life. Hopefully with my new found knowledge about the way the world works, I’ll be able to actually acquire a degree and a career after said acquisition. It’s not a career that I want. I never once said “self, I think we should be a nurse.” It’s a practical decision that revolves around what the world requires from me. I’m doing it for the money. I’ve never done that before in my life. I’ve never done something so blatantly about money. When I’m studying medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, probability and statistics, and intro to computers this semester it’s all going to be motivated by the end goal of a job that will pay me well for my time. It has nothing to do with my ideals, or about the change I want to see in the world, or about helping people…just money. Just the root of all evil. That’s what I have to concern myself with at 33 years old. Why? Best I can tell it’s because I was so brazen as to want to reproduce and have a family. Apparently that means I have to be concerned first and foremost with money. Because without it…well that doesn’t make me a very responsible family man now does it.
Now here I am, studying to be a nurse. In this case I like the euphemism of RN. RN sounds less gender specific (or how about a murse), which is a quality I like since I don’t have tits that can feed a baby. Where else does the term “nurse” come from? If you think about it I will be nursing my family with money. So my tits will feed them money instead of milk. I wish I could nurse my family by building soil, keeping livestock, and growing food…or farming, but that’s not in the cards. Not for me at least. How foolish of me, all these years thinking that the unexamined life was not worth living. When you examine it, if your going to be honest, what other conclusion can you come to other than that your examination better come up with the rent and utilities. For 750,000 years paleolithic man didn’t have to worry about rent and utilities. Money wasn’t even a concept. Life was a somatic experience with meaning all around. Now the only thing that matters is money, and the only meaning is cheap plastic Chinese pointlessness that lies about waiting to be tripped over. I can hear it now, “yeah, but he had to worry about getting eaten by saber tooth tigers, killing Woolly mammoths, and not freezing to death.” Sounds like a meaningful existence to me. What do we have to worry about now? Taxes, terrorists and football? Inconsequential drivel and cheap plastic Chinese made crap.
I’ve got an announcement to make (you must be pretty bored if you’ve made it this far)…cheap plastic Chinese made crap (for good measure, and to help drive my point home). I managed to get diagnosed by a psychiatrists with Aspergers syndrome. That’s right, I’m officially an Aspie. Just barely mind you. It wasn’t an easy case, but at the end of the day I met all of the criteria as outlined by the DSM5- 299.80. Presence of: A2,3, 4. B 1 and C,and absence of: D, E and F. I was right. At least I’m justifiably different from the rest. I have a reason for this shittier than usual attitude. I have just enough Aspie to make me intolerably in the world, but not enough to make it a disability to get me off of the hook that’s attached to the rent. Finally I have a psychological reason for not liking my own species much. Still, I have to buckle down, and go out into the pointlessness to extract money so that I can have a family. The only way to extract that money is to participate in yet more pointlessness. When society is soulless can there ever be any hope of meaningful activity? How fucked is it that the last thing I want to do is to deal with people (here again explained by Aspergers) and yet just about any work I could get will require me to deal with people. Our society is a service one. All we do is make up a bunch of needs and then service them. I’ve been thinking that maybe I’ll try to get a job at a grocery store since at least eating is a need that has to be met. A nuclear engineer turned medic turned grocery store clerk. You don’t really have to deal with people. Just ring up their shit and say “have a nice day.” Maybe I could get a job stocking shelves. That would be even better. Talk about wasted talent. Yet I never found a job that was worth any talent. Eventually I’ll be nursing, which will occasionally provide me with the opportunity to do something worth while, granted only occasionally. At least I’ll be paid well for my effort. I’ll just have to learn to become impervious to the rude patients who view the hospital more like a hotel than a hospital. I was thinking I might like to be a hospice nurse. At least then people will be dying and less prone to acting like ass holes. It should help keep my life in perspective as well. Plus, being an Aspie, I don’t suffer much from empathy, which is a positive attribute when seen from this angle. I’m just trying to focus on my strengths.
That’s gonna be some time from now, given I reach that point in time. Our society isn’t exactly healthy. What do I have to bitch about really? I’ve got a roof over my head and food in my belly. So what if I have to go out and spend my priceless time on this Earth cultivating and fostering a lifestyle that’s not worth caring about. The least I could be is grateful for the opportunity to line the man’s pockets. After all, it’s not as if I’m entitled to anything other than taxes. I’m just bitter that my ideas about right living don’t matter at the end of the day. What matters is the acquisition of money. After that, if I’m left with any, I can use it to be the change. That’s the point. Without money, you can’t be the change…not if your me, and definitely not if you have kids depending on you to keep them safe and healthy.
This Monday I’ll be off to fill out applications for a job that will hopefully be more than minimum wage. Grocery stores and restaurants. I could go back to granny snatchin’ but it will only pay $11 an hour, and I’ll have to put up with the smell of lotion and doodoo that’s so ubiquitous in those geezer freezers where we stuff our elderly for big pharma to profit off of until they stop breathing. Granny snatchin’ is too depressing for me to go back to. I’d rather flip burgers at McDonalds where I’ll at least not have to deal with the public. I can just stand there and do a menial task over and over again while not dealing with what it is that I’m actually doing there. Besides, those burgers are no more poisonous than allopathic medicine is (and I won’t be tempted to eat them either). I’ll just go from poisoning people for minimum wage to poisoning people for 60 grand a year right out of school. I think I can deal with people for that amount of money. The most I’ve ever made in my life is $28,000 a year, so I’ll be more than doubling that. That’s 60 grand? $4000 a month take home thereabouts? I’ll be fuckin’ rich, and I get to wear scrubs as a work uniform. My wife will be able to stay home and raise our children, and I’m going to have a lot. If I’m gonna be out there participating in the meaninglessness of a society not worth caring about than I’m going to at least come home to meaning. I’ll have time, and money left over after the bills are paid. That will enable me to afford to be the change I want to see in the world. Great advice Ghandi, but some of us have kids to feed. Granted, I chose to have kids, but isn’t that a large part of the human experience? Aren’t you glad your parents had you? And if you have any siblings, aren’t you glad your parents had them?
So what is the meaning of life? It seems the answer to that question only matters if you can afford to ask it in the first place.
Conspiracy, Peak Oil and Fukitol
Off the keyboard of Lucid Dreams
Published on Epihany Now on December 20, 2012
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner
Before the 9/11 truth movement existed I knew what we were being told was bull shit. I knew that because I was on the vessel that dropped the first bombs on Afghanistan as a result of 9/11. I knew in my bones that the American population, and the world, was being lied to, but I didn’t know the specifics. I wanted out of the navy before 9/11 happened. I had realized that enlisting in the military was a grave mistake for me because I valued self exploration, autonomy, and intellect; none of which the navy provided, gave a shit about, or allowed to occur. I choked down the contracts I had signed until 9/11happened. It was one thing to be slaving away as a nuclear automaton relatively benignly as far as the world was concerned, but it was quite another to be assisting in the killing of invisible innocents. I wanted to know the truth badly.
After about a year of alcohol and drug use, I started to actively pursue the truth (in those rare moments of temporary sobriety). This search led me to Alex Jones and his infowars. It didn’t take long before I became a card totin’ prisonplanet member. I listened to his broadcasts and watched all of his documentary films. For a couple of years I was an Alex Jones disciple. He verified my anger and my actions concerning the navy. I knew that I was right to do what I had done, but I didn’t have the proof until Alex Jones. When patrons came to my bar they got an ear full. I ran a lot of people off, but I opened a lot of eyes as well.
I was all about exposing the Illuminati for their NWO conspiracy to imprison the planet as an intellectual thing until I viewed “The Passion of the Christ.” Shortly after viewing that film I had a dream where I met evil incarnate in the form of an old female demon that looked a lot like Zelda from “Pet Cemetary” only scarier. It was a vivid dream that felt more like reality than my waking life. It scarred the shit out of me and caused me to run back to the eager arms of Christianity, the religion of my child hood. Yes, for about six months I could be seen sitting behind my bar during the slow times reading a pocket sized copy of the New Testament. Then I started reading the likes of Tex Marrs, whom if you don’t know, is a Christian evangelical conspiracy theory nut job. He takes the Illuminati seriously on a spiritual level and applies it all to Revelations and the end times. Now, I was a Christian conspiracy theorists, which is the original type of conspiracy theorists. In fact, the Illuminati really is a Christian conspiracy theory and doesn’t make much sense out of that context. This is Satan operating amongst man. I even got into reading the “Left Behind” series at this point in my life (I don’t mind if you laugh at my expense…I would). Then one day, and I don’t remember the day or the moment, because I don’t think there was one, I just stopped with the Christian nonsense. Basically the fear from meeting Zelda wore off and I came to my senses. All that meant was that I dropped the spiritual implications from what the Illuminati was. Now it was framed in a more secular content, but otherwise I was still ate up with it.
I met my wife in October of 2002, 10 months after flipping the penny that brought me back to the South. I was drunk, as usual, and I walked into one of the several bars I frequented looking for companionship. I was by myself this particular night. I noticed an ex-girlfriend of a friend of mine playing pool with a smokin’ hot vixen (pictured above). I always liked Summer (the ex of the friend), and knowing her gave me the courage to start talkin’ shit to that vixen. I was so broke at the time that Joey and I’s fifth apartment didn’t even have the power turned on yet (we had been living there for about two weeks). Our first date was financed on a roll of quarters belonging to Wendy. We went to a hole in the wall pool hall where they have .25 cent games and you can’t see cause all of the smoke and bad country music, and then we went to the Waffle House where we drank coffee and she ate hash browns. I told her that I had lost count at 23 women, had done just about every drug under the sun, and usually scared women away because I was too “deep.” I still have that paper coin roll in my wallet.
Six months later Wendy and I were living together. Three months after that Wendy was gone and I was left with a Goodwill couch, an entertainment stand with nothing on it, and a computer. She had vanished due to a torrid affair that I had gotten myself wrapped up in presumably for being too “deep”. I had fallen in love with a bar patron of mine who reciprocated those feelings. It is a long story, and one that I’ll spare you the details of. However, for whatever reason, Wendy did not want to give up on me, and so a few months into the new relationship I was cheating on her with Wendy. It was a mess. When it was all over, Wendy and I were back together, and she was living 70 miles away. I had a drivers license and a broke down car that didn’t work at this point. Wendy did a lot of driving on account of my sorry ass, and I still don’t know why.
When we were engaged was when I got hauled off to the slammer for being a stupid drunk. I continued going to my job managing a shit hole bar via my bike. Luckily for me, the cop who had pulled me over had resigned from Spartanburg PD and moved to Charleston. Case closed. I got back my license and didn’t get charged with a DUI (which would have sealed my fate as a loser cause I never would have worked in EMS otherwise). However I did lose 2500 dollars to a lawyer who required 5000 to represent me. He let me off the hook with just the 2500 dollar retainer on account of his punk ass didn’t have to do a damn thing for the money.
At this point, engaged, and not a damn thing going for me short of tending bars, I decided I better do something a little more in line with a domesticated lifestyle. This was when I finally decided to become an EMT. Just before we got married I got certified as an EMT-basic and began working for a local convalescent transport company making 11 dollars an hour. I worked for them “Granny Snatchin” for a little over a year before I got hired with Piedmont EMS in Rock Hill South Carolina. Getting the job was the fruition of my goal to be on a real meat wagon working EMS. Shortly after taking that job we bought our first house, which they wouldn’t allow us to buy with me on the mortgage. Wendy financed it herself with the income from her successful business as a wedding photographer. We got a really good deal. 3.65 acres surrounded by woods in the middle of the city of Rock Hill. The house was 1450 square feet with a detached 800 sqft garage. We paid 110,000 dollars with an APR of 7% fixed, which wasn’t that bad for the time. A year later the housing market collapsed.
2007 was also the year that I ran into JHK’s “The Long Emergency,” and got schooled on peak oil. Up to this point I had never heard of the idea and had never even thought about infinite growth on a finite planet. Up to that point I was unaware that our problems were much more ominous than the Illuminati’s NWO. Reading TLE was the first step on the stair case of reality and not conspiracy theory for me. I didn’t let go of the Illuminati easily at first, but Alex Jones and I had to break up. He’s a peak oil denier, and I couldn’t deny the truth of peak oil and therefore couldn’t reconcile why he would deny it. I moved on to Richard Heinberg, Michael Ruppert, Dimitri Orlov, and John Michael Greer.
Up to this point in my life I had never owned any land or seen the need to grow any food. I started gardening organically right out of the gates. Then I started prepping and dealing with the roller coaster ride that learning about peak oil becomes for anybody who doesn’t decide to bury their head in the sand. I debated for a long time about whether to procreate or not. Wendy pretty much just took my word for it on the PO front. She was too busy running her business to notice or really care about PO and mostly just placated my concerns about the future. She wanted a child, and so did I, it was just the future I was concerned about. How could I willingly bring a child into a world that was on Hubbert’s bumpy plateau? A couple of years of PO study and obsession goes by and we decide to have a child. In 2010 my son Ayden Zen was born.
My wife’s business began to tank due to negative returns on technology. Digital camera technology is so good now that any dumb ass soccer mom can take 5000 pictures at a wedding and then photoshop 500 or so of them into descent pictures. Talent is rapidly dissolving into technology in photography. Camera equipment is very expensive, and this is part of the reason why photography got so expensive. Now rich soccer moms get their 3000 dollar camera along with thousands of dollars in related equipment and editing soft ware and they’re in business. They can undercut the professionals because they are just playing for egoistic reasons and not concerned with paying bills cause their husbands handle all of that. In our case, my 28,000 dollar a year (gross income, I brought home 2000 a month) just paid for the vehicles and our house and I was out of money before I was even paid. Our son arrived and Wendy’s business was on the downward spiral.
I was extremely stressed out by all of these changes. Wendy felt guilty about her money going away which put her in a bad mood, which further strained our relationship. I was stressed out trying to live a 40,000 dollar lifestyle on 28,000 dollars with no feasible way to better my situation. My son added an entire new layer of stress to all of this. Healthcare was slowly changing from something I loved to something I hated due to all of the governmental changes. We went from patients to customers, and I began hating all of the new bureaucracies that became inherent in the new healthcare landscape. What I had was a house that was falling apart. A house that was a ticking time bomb fit to explode and leave us with a leaking roof, no heat, cockroaches, and thousands of other things that needed to be maintained with no money to maintain any of it. All my career working on the meat wagon was doing was keeping us from drowning, for the time being. I broke and ended up on fukitol for a short period of time. If you’ve been following Epiphany now for the last year, than you’ll likely know what’s transpired since then. It not, have a look around.
This post pretty much concludes my autobiographical stint, at least in any kind of chronological order. I’ll be wrapping it up with one more post along with Jason Heppenstall and WHD (who’s apparently going to begin and end his auto offering in one post soon). I’ll save you any suspense cause we’ve got enough of that waiting on Jason. I’m just going to be writing a conclusion blog. I won’t be concluding Epiphany Now, but I’ll more than likely be slowing down. January 9th I’m going to be taking 13 hours of college prerequisites for the RN program at our local community college, plus I’m gonna be going back to work granny snatchin’ part time. It’s come to that. I’ve got to pay the monkey. My wife is five months along into our second pregnancy. We have no income for 2013 unless I go back to work. We just found out yesterday that we’re having another boy and the ultrasound revealed no abnormalities. After all of this, I’m going to be plugging back into the Matrix. I’ll be talking about that and my plans for the future in my next post.